


coffee cake crumbs

by mouseymightymarvellous



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:14:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23645215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mouseymightymarvellous/pseuds/mouseymightymarvellous
Summary: All Darcy wants is to sit down and enjoy her overpriced lemon poppyseed loaf in peace.Space, time, and her inability to not stub her toe on the nearest immovable object conspire.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Darcy Lewis
Comments: 6
Kudos: 101





	coffee cake crumbs

_“_ Holy shit, my dude! Are you okay?” It’s a reflexive question, because Darcy just watched as the man she was about to slam into ducked out of the way of her incoming disaster like the coffee cup she’s wielding was bullets and he’s Neo.

Aw, she misses that MMORPG.

“Oh, cake, no,” she moans, finally realizing that while Neo’s shirt wasn’t victim of the way Darcy has apparently never a day in her life quite mastered the art of walking and paying attention to where she and anything else in space are in relation to one another, the slice of lemon poppy seed loaf that she just overpaid an entire four dollars for is now lying on the floor.

Neo forgotten as he graciously brushes aside her concern, Darcy pauses to mourn the ignoble carnage of her ongoing feud with space and her limbs’ position therein.

Sure, puberty hit her like a train late at age fifteen and she hadn’t quite known what to do with herself, but she thought you were supposed to have grown out of not understanding where centre mass was long before a full ten years later.

Darcy mourns, and does the quick math of lemon poppy seed loaf vs four entire dollars vs the latest grants that given they haven’t heard back “yes” about yet, probably means no.

She sighs, and bends down to pick up her fallen comrade.

“Do not go gently into that good night,” she mutters under her breath as she lowers the mess of sugary goodness and paper napkins down into its final resting place, “rage, rage against the dying of the light!”

The coffee shop is busy and uncaring of her dramatics.

Darcy sniffs away a tear.

They have no poetry in their souls.

But, well, she has maybe fifteen minutes to scroll through her Twitter feed and hyperventilate into her coffee over the state of the world before Jane starts calling, frantically looking for this doohickey or that goober. (Or, well, fifteen minutes or two days. It depends, with Jane.)

Darcy stands with the particular predatory stance of a millennial hunting for a seat in a coffee shop where she won’t have to make eye contact with a stranger and be forced to be faced with the suffocating light living in every human soul that struggles to be free of the yoke of the consumerist society in which they are each entrenched.

Because space and the universe hate her for attempting to break them (only to put them back together again, Jane had to promise after the thing with the Furby), and take every opportunity to punish her, the only available seat is a stool crammed between Neo and a couple having a very loudly whispered break up.

Now that Darcy thinks about it, space and the universe are not confined by linear time, and maybe her whole life has been at the mercy of their cruel machinations, and this is why Darcy has a permanently crooked little toe from the number of times she’s managed to stub it on various immovable corners and heavy objects.

Darcy shuffles her way past squished tables and carefully steps over trailing power cords to make her way to the back, head on a swivel to cut off anyone thinking of making a play for her stool. It may be completely uncomfortable situation, but it beats having to stand awkwardly until a different seat opens up. She is not giving it up to some under-caffeinated businessman wearing a several thousand dollar watch who probably wouldn’t think twice about buying a second piece of over priced lemon poppy seed loaf if he dropped his on the floor.

In a series of moves perfected while attempting to slip through large family gatherings without having to answer for her academic pursuits, delayed degree, and eventual life plans, Darcy twists her way through the crowd, spinning neatly around the man who has now stood up with his hands in the air, declaring with a staccato kind of finality that, “Well, if that’s the way you really feel about my script, then you should have said so three months ago, Ryan!” only to storm off with his head held high.

Victory in sight, Darcy lunges for her stool, and—again, universe and space and time and her inability to move today, apparently, without losing a too sweet, necessary for her ongoing sanity, coffee shop offering—trips over the satchel that has been knocked dramatically to the side with the playwright’s exit.

Darcy’s heart drops as she slips, one arm wheeling as she tries to rebalance, her other hand clutching the coffee whose poor, short existence is about to be dramatically cut short.

And then—like he’s rewritten the code or however that movie ends, she’s going to be honest, she’s never actually watched it all the way through, she only ever catches 7 minute intervals when it’s playing on television, even though she’s seen the other movies completely—Neo has her in a secure grip: one broad hand around her waist, the other around her wrist keeping her cup level, the two of them braced chest to chest.

She can tell by the crisp line of hair behind his ear that he’s recently cut it and he’s clean-shaven and he has the prettiest blue eyes she has ever had the (what will surely be the only) chance of staring into.

Well, well, well.

Maybe space and the universe aren’t always against her after all.

**Author's Note:**

> I solicited some prompts for 30 minute sprints, and the ever wonderful @cherenuit requested: darcy/bucky coffee(cake).


End file.
